# Connect to your database.
use MyApp::Schema;
my $schema = MyApp::Schema->connect($dbi_dsn, $user, $pass, \%dbi_params);
# Query for all artists and put them in an array,
# or retrieve them as a result set object.
# $schema->resultset returns a DBIx::Class::ResultSet
my @all_artists = $schema->resultset('Artist')->all;
my $all_artists_rs = $schema->resultset('Artist');
# Output all artists names
# $artist here is a DBIx::Class::Row, which has accessors
# for all its columns. Rows are also subclasses of your Result class.
foreach $artist (@all_artists) {
print $artist->name, "\n";
}
# Create a result set to search for artists.
# This does not query the DB.
my $johns_rs = $schema->resultset('Artist')->search(
# Build your WHERE using an SQL::Abstract structure:
{ name => { like => 'John%' } }
);
# Execute a joined query to get the cds.
my @all_john_cds = $johns_rs->search_related('cds')->all;
# Fetch the next available row.
my $first_john = $johns_rs->next;
# Specify ORDER BY on the query.
my $first_john_cds_by_title_rs = $first_john->cds(
undef,
{ order_by => 'title' }
);
# Create a result set that will fetch the artist data
# at the same time as it fetches CDs, using only one query.
my $millennium_cds_rs = $schema->resultset('CD')->search(
{ year => 2000 },
{ prefetch => 'artist' }
);
my $cd = $millennium_cds_rs->next; # SELECT ... FROM cds JOIN artists ...
my $cd_artist_name = $cd->artist->name; # Already has the data so no 2nd query
# new() makes a Result object but doesnt insert it into the DB.
# create() is the same as new() then insert().
my $new_cd = $schema->resultset('CD')->new({ title => 'Spoon' });
$new_cd->artist($cd->artist);
$new_cd->insert; # Auto-increment primary key filled in after INSERT
$new_cd->title('Fork');
$schema->txn_do(sub { $new_cd->update }); # Runs the update in a transaction
# change the year of all the millennium CDs at once
$millennium_cds_rs->update({ year => 2002 });

This is an SQL to OO mapper with an object API inspired by Class::DBI (with a compatibility layer as a springboard for porting) and a resultset API that allows abstract encapsulation of database operations. It aims to make representing queries in your code as perl-ish as possible while still providing access to as many of the capabilities of the database as possible, including retrieving related records from multiple tables in a single query, JOIN, LEFT JOIN, COUNT, DISTINCT, GROUP BY, ORDER BY and HAVING support.

DBIx::Class can handle multi-column primary and foreign keys, complex queries and database-level paging, and does its best to only query the database in order to return something you've directly asked for. If a resultset is used as an iterator it only fetches rows off the statement handle as requested in order to minimise memory usage. It has auto-increment support for SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server and DB2 and is known to be used in production on at least the first four, and is fork- and thread-safe out of the box (although your DBD may not be).

This project is still under rapid development, so large new features may be marked EXPERIMENTAL - such APIs are still usable but may have edge bugs. Failing test cases are *always* welcome and point releases are put out rapidly as bugs are found and fixed.

We do our best to maintain full backwards compatibility for published APIs, since DBIx::Class is used in production in many organisations, and even backwards incompatible changes to non-published APIs will be fixed if they're reported and doing so doesn't cost the codebase anything.

The test suite is quite substantial, and several developer releases are generally made to CPAN before the branch for the next release is merged back to trunk for a major release.